Overnight Monday and Tuesday this week brought torrential rain and we woke to find water dripping into the wall where our consumer unit and electric meter are housed and also dripping down one of the old chimneys onto our central heating boiler. This was however promptly dealt with and thankfully the rest of the week was dry.
The carpenters started on site on Thursday setting up the wood for the new gable end and on Friday the brick layer built up a large amount of the gable block work.
This weekend we have done some work in the front bedroom, removing the remainder of the coving and stripping the top layer of plaster from the internal wall.
Tomorrow the carpenters will be back to push on with the roof work and we are relieved to see the weather forecast for this week is good.

The start of this week brought the arrival of the steels needed for the front cantilever.

Unfortunately I had to be at work on Tuesday and missed the installation of them.

The remaining chimney stacks have gone this week and the chimney breasts in the lounge and front bedroom have been taken down and blocked up.

This has however meant we no longer have a tv aerial as it was attached to the chimney, so there is no watching tv in the evenings anymore for us and our sofa is wrapped up so we have nowhere to sit and relax either. As a result we are finding ourselves going to bed early to watch programmes on the ipad.

The rest of the scaffolding has been put up in preparation for work to start on the roof next week.

On a separate note we have pleasantly surprised at the success of selling the old fireplace and front door on ebay, so we will continue selling on items that are in good condition to maximise our funds.

Week 3 passed by without a great deal happening as the builders were only on site for 2 days.

The block work did get done up to the damp proof level and the over site was done but thats about it.

Week 4 however has been fast moving and progress has been good.

Most of the block work is now done, the porch has been demolished, the scaffolding has gone up, one chimney stack has been taken down, the gable end has been removed and the old bedroom walls have been demolished.

week 3 – block work

week 3 – over site

week 4 block work

week 4 block work

week 4 porch demolition

week 4 scaffolding

week 4 rear view scaffolding

We are trying to make sure we keep ahead of the builders and ensure we have done all we need to do, so that they aren’t delayed at all.

Today we have removed the old fire place and boarded it up so that they can get on with demolishing the chimney stack without rubble and dust coming into our lounge.

We have also continued with stripping the bathroom, something we started a couple of weeks ago. The shower tray is now out and one wall has been stripped of tiles which leaves the other tiled wall to strip.

Making a decision on tiles for the bathroom is proving difficult. Whilst we have found some good tiles and have a few samples we are looking at, we are still a bit unsure exactly what to go with.

Yesterday we went to see an Aluk window sample that had been made for us.

We have found that because we want aluminium tilt turn windows, suppliers can supply them but they don’t have them in their showrooms to see and we really wanted to see a working window before going ahead. UK Windows (Surrey) kindly arranged for a sample to be made for us.